


Modern Love

by AngelOfDeath10



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drama, F/M, Humor, Past Rape/Non-con, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 09:29:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21052127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelOfDeath10/pseuds/AngelOfDeath10
Summary: In which a night out goes really wrong (but right?) and Sakura makes a new friend by becoming an impromptu one punch girl and viral sensation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, because dammit all if I did NaruSaku would be canon and there would be enough subtext for some really twisted GaaSaku out there.
> 
> Also the noncon portion of this is only mentioned in vague terms, in the past, but I would rather be safe than sorry when it comes to triggers.
> 
> Originally written in 2018.

"Smile!"

"I am!"

Sakura strained her mouth to the fullest, trying to answer Ino's demands for a selfie. It wasn't working, though, and she knew it as much from the way Ino was jabbing her in the side with a bony elbow as from the way her cheeks literally hurt.

"Tilt that chin out, you have as many chins as forehead wrinkles."

Sakura gave an answering jab to Ino, perhaps a little less kind than she meant it to be because the responding kick from her friend made her grimace.

"Why is this taking so long?" They were crammed together on a Thursday night of all things in front of some club because of cheap promotional drinks for ladies of a certain age bracket and it was cold. Sakura was using up one of her rare nights to herself off shift, and this whole activity seemed pointless from the uncomfortably high shoes to the uncomfortably high hemlines on her borrowed skirt.

"Haven't you heard the expression you catch more flies with honey?" Ino examined her phone as she flicked through the many pictures she had snapped to find one that was social media worthy. She pursed her lips together and many were discarded from her brightly glowing phone.

Sakura pulled her jacket closer around her as if that would generate more warmth. "Sounds like a waste of honey."

"Right?" Ino agreed with her, though Sakura knew from experience the cavalier 'I don't need a man' attitude would fade as the hours ticked by and drinks were consumed. When they were riding over to the club together Sakura had spied a picture of Chouji out of the corner of her eye, and if Ino was looking at pictures of her ex it was only a matter of time before something dramatic was going to happen between the two of them yet again.

A shout from inside the doorway had them turning their heads, but it just looked like some frat boys spilling out onto the street. Sakura thought that boded ill, since she wasn't really looking to get hit on by some guy who would spill his beer down her front and apologize by trying to feel her up immediately following.

"Are we in the right place, Ino? Like, not are we at the right location but…"

"You worry too much." With a wave Ino dismissed her apprehensions and instead concentrated on getting the perfect picture of their amazing girls night out posted. Sakura got the sinking suspicion that this ladies night was not for her benefit, or even Ino's, but really to goad Chouji into saying something. Lordy, it was news year's eve two years ago all over again.

"You're buying the first three rounds."

"I think you'll find that if you get that smile right neither of us will be buying any rounds. Why do you think I pulled out these skirts? Really, Sakura, have some sense."

"Sense?! Sense would have told me to tell you to go to hell the second you mentioned stilettos in the middle of winter. Sense is telling me that right now I could be at home, in pajamas, streaming something interesting and eating whatever I want."

Ino clutched at her heart. "You are going to kill me. I'm going to die right here of boredom just from the description of your pathetic life."

The frat guys that had spilled out onto the street had made their way over near them, and had gotten exponentially louder. Something was setting them off, and out of the corner of her eye Sakura saw a flash of red.

"Look, partying was cute when we were in school but now that we have normal jobs we need to think about, you know, maybe acting like adults."

"Adults have fun and get drunk, too. You're talking about acting like a boring person because you think that makes you responsible."

"Look here—" Sakura turned around in line to give Ino a piece of her mind and possibly stomp off for a while (or at least glide careful in her high heels a short distance away) when the circle of frat boys broke just enough for her to see a person in the middle, lips bloody and eyes rolling around in his head.

Some guy with a hat on backwards was pushing the man's shoulder, and she could see that the man was in a suit but everything was unbuttoned down to the waist, shirt half tucked in, a sleeve partially coming off of the jacket. He looked like he had been mugged and needed help and everything in Sakura told her she couldn't possibly ignore someone in trouble, no matter the odds.

Squaring her shoulders she walked out of line and towards the circle of men who were moving the swaying businessman into the street as he attempted to ignore them and move away. Ino, only glancing up from her phone because Sakura had suddenly walked away, started to shout a warning but Sakura was already up to the men.

"Excuse me," she started but then gasped and took a step back as the man who was turning to face her and in the middle of an expletive was grabbed by the hair and sprawled out before her. In moments the circle was a melee with the jeers of the frat boys turning to anger and then alarm as the businessman attacked them with a viciousness Sakura had only seen in hammy grindhouse movies.

He had taken down three of them, one of whom he had delivered a sharp kick to the back, when two of them grabbed his arms and pulled him back to allow a third to punch him in the gut. The frat kid only got in one good blow as the businessman gave what sounded like a howl and jumped up to use both feet to kick him in the chest and knock everyone down at once. On the ground and free again, he was fighting like a demon, biting and scratching as often as he was punching and kicking. It wasn't mindless, entirely, but it also didn't seem very intentional.

The frat boys were gathering themselves together and trying to make a quick exit when one, to get up from the ground more quickly, suddenly pulled on Sakura's arm. She stumbled forward, right into the path of the red haired demon, and his fist was flying towards her face when all those years of martial arts with her step-brother Naruto kicked in and her arm came up to deflect it. Instinctively, and filled with her own righteous fear and anger, she launched the counterattack she had practiced more times than she could count and she felt her knuckles split as her fist connected with the demon's jaw.

Behind her, Sakura heard someone go "Woo!".

Dread in her heart, she peeked over her shoulder to see every last person who had been waiting in line to get in the club had their phone out and was presumably recording what had just happened. Ino certainly was. Marching over to her friend, while people continued to film her in specific, she grabbed Ino's arm and dragged her in the direction of the limp man.

"Call an uber right now!" Sakura hissed through her clenched jaw.

"That was so cool. He came at you so fast and you were like… POW!" Ino said, opening the app faithfully.

"Shut up!" Sakura was blushing, mortified at the whole situation. She checked the pulse of the businessman, now laying in the gutter, and wondered how much he was going to sue her for the assault. Now that she was closer up, his suit and shoes looked expensive. Oh god, could she get fired from her job for this? All that video!

"Should I call the cops too?" Ino said, fingers poised over the phone.

"No!" Sakura yelled, then cleared her throat and calmed down. "No. Let's just get him somewhere safe and make sure he's ok." And see how much he remembers when he comes to….

***

"You're being stupid, why am I letting you be so stupid?" Ino said as she helped Sakura pull the still unconscious but now gently shivering man out of the car and into her secure apartment complex. Once past the door and into the elevator Ino shifted 100% of the limp man's weight onto Sakura and pulled Sakura's apartment key out of her tiny clutch.

"What if he tries to murder you the moment he wakes up? Did you think about that?" Ino waved a manicured finger in Sakura's face while Sakura struggled to balance on her heels and support the weight of the man. He wasn't particularly tall, but he must have been all muscle to be so hard to shift around. He smelled faintly of garbage, which given how she had laid him out in a gutter might have been partially her fault.

"From the way he's shaking I assume he's going through withdrawal and I seriously doubt he'll be able to lift a finger once he wakes up."

"He seemed pretty energetic earlier, is all I'm saying."

The elevator opened and Sakura hauled the prone form draped on her back towards the door Ino was opening down the hall.

"Hurry up, this is so embarrassing." Ino gestured for Sakura to hurry, which only made her gasp out a laugh.

Sakura found her voice in between balancing the man's weight precariously. "You're the one that said it wouldn't be humane to just leave him at a hotel lobby or something."

"Well I wasn't volunteering your place or mine!"

Sakura sprawled the man out on her couch even as Ino shut the door hastily behind and took a seat on the chair across from him with her knee jiggling and her phone out.

"Watch him while I get some supplies to clean him up." At Ino's bald look of panic she reassured her. "Don't worry, I have it all in a little kit it will only take a minute." She kicked off her shoes towards the door as she made her way to her postage stamp of a bedroom and pulled the tiny med kit out from under her bed. It was just a little kit, but she had learned long ago when Naruto was getting into more and more serious fights with bullies in middle school that it was better to keep it handy. Even though he wasn't crawling into her room to escape the scrutiny of their parents anymore, the habit had stuck.

Incidentally, she glanced down at her split knuckles and wondered how she would explain it away when she was back at work on Saturday. Trial kickboxing class? She washed her hands off and gave a quick bandage to her right fist before going back into the main room to relieve Ino of her anxiety.

The man hadn't moved, but Ino had picked up the metal lamp next to the chair as if she was ready for him to spring into action at any moment.

"Ino, just look at something on your phone or whatever. Calm down."

Setting to work she cleaned the blood off his face, noting that between the popped off buttons and the blood his cream colored suit shirt was toast. The pale skin that was peeking out from the open shirt told Sakura that her mystery monster had abs for days, and it seemed such a deeply inappropriate thought that she felt the blush wash over her skin hotly.

Tearing her eyes back to his bruised face she noted that his nose was slightly off center but not swollen, making her wonder how many fights had come before this. Once the blood was off his face, she noted the dark bags under his eyes and ridging of a scar on his forehead. It seemed to be making a pattern, but as she pulled back to try to figure out what it was she realized all at once that despite the bags, the split lip, and the bruise settling around his jaw, he was a startlingly handsome man. Not the kind of handsome she was used to, athletic and symmetrical, but magnetic all the same.

"You look like you want to lick him."

"Haven't you gone home yet?" Sakura snapped not unkindly at Ino while secretly wondering not for the first time if her friend was psychic or something.

"I'm just saying if you're so thirsty then we definitely need to go back to that bar next time you get a night off." Ino paused. "Well, maybe not that specific bar. But we need to get you lai—"

The man on the couch gave a low groan. He started shivering in earnest now, and Sakura jumped back as he opened one bloodshot eye. It was a minty green, not that far off from her own. But while her pink hair seemed ridiculously childish with her candy apple green eyes, his rusty auburn hair seemed to make his pale green eyes all the more striking.

"Where am I?" He checked the watch on his wrist, noting the crack down it with a grimace. Sakura desperately hoped she hadn't caused that because that watch looked more expensive than everything in her apartment put together.

"You got into a fight and my friend here tried to help you." Ino supplied. Technically true, even if it was missing an important detail.

Sakura had taken another step or two away, just out of arm's reach in case he did do something crazy. The man clutched his head like it was hurting him terribly.

"Is there someone we can call to come get you?" Ino gently continued to prod.

The man's gravelly baritone rattled off a number and Ino had already dialed before Sakura could caution her. Ino stood up and paced as she waited for someone to pick up. Meanwhile, Sakura went into nurse mode.

"Did you take anything? Is that why you're shaking? You should tell me in case we should be calling an ambulance right now."

The man groaned. Obviously unwilling to discuss this.

"Whatever you're feeling right now, it's only going to get worse if you plan on riding it out cold turkey."

He was mumbling something to himself and Sakura allowed herself to step closer only to hear a stream of nonsense.

"…lying tongues cut the out eat them eat them around the dawn is as good a time as any for revenge…"

He hugged his arms to himself closely, and Sakura's brows knit with concern. This man was seriously unwell, and he shouldn't have been wandering the streets in the cold when clearly he possessed enough means to have people who should be looking out for him.

Ino must have tapped her without it registering because next thing Sakura knew she was being yanked out of her reverie by the arm towards the tiny kitchenette. Ino pointed a shiny red acrylic at the ball of misery on Sakura's couch.

"There are people coming for him, but we need to get him to the front of your building in like fifteen."

"Who is coming?"

"Does it even matter? His people. He gave us the number. It's his business. And frankly, he shouldn't even be here. He should be in a hospital emergency room or a police station."

Ino wasn't wrong, but Sakura wasn't about to admit to that. "He needed help. And he needed help particularly because I had cold cocked him in front of a lot of people. Were you going to sit there with me while I explain that to police?" Ino put on her best 'you have got to be kidding me' face and Sakura relented a tad. "I wouldn't have done it if I were alone. It's only because you're with me that I felt safe enough."

Even knowing Sakura was buttering her up, Ino couldn't stay mad. "Come on, I'll get him on you back again so we can get him downstairs."

Sighing, Sakura stretched out her arms in an attempt to get at least a little more limber before she picked him up again.

***

A blond woman in a winter coat, a floral day dress that didn't fit the season, and combat boots got out of the driver's seat of a large luxury car that pulled into the loading zone in front of Sakura's building. From the passenger side came a man who looked very similar to the one slumped over and shivering on the sidewalk next to Sakura only his hair seemed browner in the dim lamplight and he was dressed more casually. The man's smile was a contrast to the woman's frown, but the family resemblance comforted Sakura. At least she knew they were probably his relatives.

"Where was he?" The man asked while the woman pulled a prescription bottle out of her jacket pocket and forced two pills into the shaking man's mouth.

Sakura didn't want to peel her eyes away as she watched the woman pull a half full plastic water bottle from another pocket. Maybe the red haired man wasn't an addict after all, maybe he was just off his meds.

"Outside a bar. There was a fight…"

A snort came from the woman crouched over the businessman. It sounded more amused than anything.

"We're so happy you found him, we've been deeply worried since we discovered him missing." Even though the words were exactly what Sakura would expect from a concerned relative, something was off about this whole situation. Maybe it was the man's too bright smile or the rough manner in which the woman hauled the businessman to his feet.

"Does this happen to him a lot?"

"Not anymore," the woman said before the man shot her a quelling glare. Giving him a wrinkle of her nose and a roll of her eyes she dragged the businessman towards the car without another word.

Sakura was going to offer to help when the man stepped in between her and her view of the pair. "You're not injured in any way are you?" He glanced down meaningfully at her bandaged hand and Sakura fought the urge to hide it behind her. She was not guilty of anything, even if she felt like she was guilty of a lot of things.

"I'm just fine." She stated with a confidence she wasn't sure she actually felt.

"Excellent," the man said, a little too quickly. "We'll be in touch."

He turned on his heel and she took that to mean she had just been dismissed. Sakura didn't like being treated so inconsequentially given everything she had been through for the past couple hours, and she didn't even notice how tightly she was clenching her fists until a drop of blood from her reopened wound dribbled down a finger.

The car pulled away with squealing tires.

"Well, that was something!" Ino startled Sakura out of her dark mood.

Worried for the man, unsure how she felt about her part in all of this, Sakura mumbled half to herself. "There's something deeply off about what just happened."

"You only just noticed?" Ino replied.

***

She knew she was in for it when Sakura awoke from a restless sleep to semi constant buzzing from her phone. Assuming friends were being annoying on a Friday morning over a group text, Sakura rolled out of bed feeling not at all refreshed and with hair sticking up from having slept on it wet from her late night shower. With a pot of uninspiring oatmeal on the tiny one burner stove, Sakura stirred her instant coffee and picked up the dreaded phone at last.

Picking out Naruto's name first, since hearing from him while he was deployed was relatively rare these days, strings of laugh crying emojis and thumbs up assaulted her. Following the trail of nonsense back to real words all she saw was "NOICE!" and a link to a video.

Dread pooled in her stomach as a youtube video buffered, frozen on a frame of the back of Ino's distinctive blond high ponytail. In the somewhat dark background her short pink hair stood out. As it played an all too familiar scenario she was happy to note that voices were indistinct, but the scuffle itself looked a lot more violent then what she had remembered and it lasted much longer as well. By the time it got to the part where she dodged the punch and laid out the businessman Sakura cringed in surprise.

After that moment the camera turned towards the guy with a funny goatee who gave two thumbs up and said "Noice shot bro!" and then the video cut out. "Noice shot bro!" was a viral sensation, with over a million hits in less than twelve hours of being posted and had spawned other minorly viral copycat videos showing crazy situations and ending in the stupid catchphrase. Sakura was just incidental, which was a bit of a relief, but it explained why her phone was blowing up. Ino and Sakura had been like peanut butter and jelly for their whole child and adulthood, and while there were lots of blond women and a fair number of pink haired women the combination was distinctive enough to fire her friends' collective neural pathways.

There was a whole day she could hide out, but at the same time the ominous words of the businessman's family last night came back to her. We'll be in touch…

Lost in her own internal life, the smoke alarm brought Sakura back to earth pretty fast. Breakfast was ruined and so was her pan, but it seemed like that was par for the course.

***

"So what's it like to be famous?" Ino met Sakura for lunch, at Sakura's request, even though Ino normally would work through her hour at the law firm. That meant Sakura would be paying for lunch, and given the ruined pan and the bloodstained couch that would need replacing, it was turning out to be an expensive day.

Sakura picked at her salad next to her sandwich and tried not to stare at her still bandaged knuckles. "I'm just grateful you can't see my face that well in the video."

"Just you wait until all the internet weirdos hunt you down. You'll be that badass fighting chick."

"I should just go into digital hiding. Delete all my accounts."

Ino was relishing the torture so wasn't about to stop. "Maybe a local news station will pick it up. You could become the face of self-defense for women."

"Have I told you lately that I hate you?"

With a chuckle Ino took a bite of her salad before changing the subject slyly. "Chouji called me this morning. He wanted to know if I was ok."

"You weren't even involved in the fight…" Sakura mumbled, knowing that wouldn't register to the pair of them.

"We're going to have dinner tomorrow, at his new restaurant." Ino preened a bit. "It's gotten great reviews."

Sakura used inhuman effort to keep her eyes from rolling. "I thought you broke up over him opening a new restaurant last time. You said he didn't have any time for you and you were sick of it."

Ino sniffed and pretended Sakura hadn't said anything at all. Lunch passed pleasantly enough after that with them comparing comments from their friends over the viral video and their featured spots in it and Sakura was feeling almost optimistic that this would blow over quickly when Ino stopped her at the plate return.

"By the way, I got a text from that number from last night. They said 'my pink haired friend' should come talk to them 'at her earliest convenience'. Like next week. There's another number to call to make an appointment."

Sakura almost straight up dropped her empty ceramic plate on the tile floor. "Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" she hissed.

"Obviously it would have ruined my lunch while you stewed in your own worry." Flicking imaginary dust off her wool work skirt, Ino was not meeting Sakura's eyes. After all the emotions of the past day Sakura was a powder keg ready to blow. "I'll forward you the number, unless you want me to call for you. But I warn you I work by the hour and my rates are exorbitant. I looked up the number, it's for a regular corporation… Suna something. I think it does taxes or finance or whatever."

"I'll call. Just forward it to me."

Lunch churned in her stomach, and Sakura wondered at how quickly a life could be put in disarray. She needed to go exercise or something to burn off all her anxiety.

***

It wasn't just some business, it was a huge business, was Sakura's first takeaway. Suna, Inc. took up its own skyscraper and not just a few floors but the whole building. It was in the financial district so it probably did deal with money, but it seemed to have its fingers in a lot of pies judging by its very low internet profile and polished corporate website.

This felt like a terrible use of her day off, but it would be better than spending another work shift stewing over what might happen. She had been so distracted she had attracted Tsunade's attention, and the stern warning had been deserved yesterday. When Sakura got careless at the hospital people could suffer.

Sakura gave her name to the receptionist who gave her a digitized visitor's pass that she was told would allow her to access the floor her appointment was on. It was a big number, and it sounded like the top of the building. She straightened her spine and thought again belatedly that the sweater dress and leggings she had chosen were too casual for this setting. Even the receptionist looked like she would be walking out of a glass office to a boardroom any moment.

Professionals getting on and off the elevators gave Sakura the side eye but politely ignored her as they went about their business. Slowly, the elevator made its way to the top floor and the doors opened to blinding sunlight. It was a clear day and the entranceway was expansive and seemed to be lined by windows and nothing else. Not many offices up here, just executives.

Another receptionist, who appeared to be the carbon copy of the woman Sakura had encountered downstairs, took Sakura's name and asked her to wait for a moment while she informed "Mr. Sabaku" of her arrival. Unsure of how she was supposed to respond or feel about the whole thing, Sakura just nodded and went to sit down.

There wasn't even a plant up here to keep her company, she noted, and the arid environment was making her thirsty. The recirculated air was too warm for her liking, especially in the sweater dress and tights. A bead of sweat was collecting at the base of her spine and she prayed she wouldn't pit out from the stress and heat.

No names on these offices, Sakura observed grimly. The people in these offices didn't need names. People probably just knew who they were.

"Please follow me," Sakura suddenly came back to the present where the receptionist gestured towards the central office. As she stood up she realized that she was a lot shorter than the woman escorting her, and by comparison looked rather round and dumpy. It wasn't something she normally thought, not being the kind of person to use comparative looks to make her feel any way in particular. But it seemed more relevant as the door was opened for her and the strikingly familiar face of the businessman came into view.

His lip was still healing and the bruise from her punch hadn't totally faded from his pale chin, but everything else was like a bizarre mirror image from the week previous. The brown suit was pristine, perfectly tailored, and his wing tip shoes had a high shine. The rusty hair that had been in total disarray was smoothed back, making him look older than he probably was. No bloody grimace on his face now, just a neutral line of thin lip. Those dark rings around his eyes were still there, though, and they hadn't entirely lost their bloodshot quality.

He met her halfway through the huge office, hand extended. Wiping her palm quickly on her hip, Sakura grasped him and wondered if it would be impolite to try to examine his knuckles. Instead she focused on his neutral grey tie and the shiny tie clip that held it in place. His handshake was as solid as years of practice could make it, no doubt.

"Ms. Haruno." He acknowledged, and the voice still caused her blood pressure to rise as her heart sped up. "Sit."

No please and thank you from Mr. Sabaku it would seem. The leather chair that sat opposite his gave her the impression of being called to the principal's office (something that had never happened to her, but a place she had picked up Naruto plenty of times after school). He sat down with a desk between them, but it didn't feel like enough space somehow. This office was bigger than her apartment, bigger than her apartment twice over, but the moment felt unsettlingly intimate.

"I prefer Sakura." She said. And then was forced to clear her throat as she gave a little cough from the dryness of the air.

"Pardon?"

"Call me Sakura." She repeated, louder, blushing despite there being no reason blushing should occur. It was only the unbidden and not entirely unwelcome memory of his abs that had spurred it on, and that was fully the fault of her traitorous mind. Saboteur.

The businessman blinked and waited just long enough to unnerve her before responding. "Gaara."

"Do you prefer Mr. Sabaku?"

"Not from you."

The sweat that had simply threatened itself earlier beaded up in earnest and ran down her back. Sakura shivered in the heat.


	2. Chapter 2

It was only natural to pretend like nothing was unusual about this. Sakura met with CEOs every day. More often than not because she was stationed in a cardiac ward, but unconscious CEOs were still CEOs. This shouldn't feel any different. But the unblinking stare coming at her from across the desk was intimidating all the same, and Sakura's eyes watered involuntarily. Damn that dry air.

Gaara pulled a small rectangular piece of paper out of a leather bound folder that was sitting between a sleek computer and a stack of plastic bound reports, and slid it to sit in front of her. She arched her eyebrow delicately in his direction, making no move to pick it up.

"What's this supposed to be?"

"Consider it a preemptive counter offer, Ms. Ha… Sakura." He caught himself awkwardly. As if he were unused to a lack of formality.

A sinking feeling unrelated to the unwanted attraction she was almost ready to acknowledge for the redhead was duly confirmed when she turned the paper over to reveal a check in her name which had enough zeros to have her suck a sudden breath through her teeth. It wasn't quit your job money, but it certainly looked like nest egg money.

"Certain individuals would be very interested to know the definitive identity of a certain person who may or may not have been involved in an incident last Thursday evening. I'm simply asking that your memory be unclear of the specifics."

Rage suffused Sakura. This was hush money. She had come here worried he would sue her for assault and instead he was trying to pay to keep her quiet because of whatever business or interpersonal issues made this embarrassing for him. Throw money at it, huh? It probably worked in the past.

With her usual decisiveness, Sakura gave the paper a quick tear down the center and dropped it on the floor at her feet. Gaara, for his part, stifled any sort of reaction other than a twitch of his fingers. He was probably a great poker player.

"I assure you, holding out for a better offer is a mistake." There was an edge to his words that hadn't existed before.

"I'm holding out for a more human offer." Sakura responded through clenched teeth. She wanted to lecture him, but she had a feeling it would fall on deaf ears. She hadn't been this mad in a long time, and usually only Naruto could get her this worked up. People may be largely bought and sold in Gaara's world, but she cloaked herself in her integrity like a shield and he had just attacked her. Wanting that money had made her feel like a bad person, and ripping that check felt like a supremely terrible move, but how would she have felt a week from now? A year?

Gaara looked at her with faint confusion, the sharpness dulled but not disappeared from his demeanor.

"You know, you could have just said someone wants to blackmail you and you wanted my help. I'd help you for free."

"You must want something." Gaara countered, unconvinced of her altruism.

What a sad life he must lead, Sakura thought. She considered his words a moment before landing on the only thing that made any sense. "Yeah, there is something I could use some help with."

A hint of a smirk flitted over his expression, eyes glassy, like she was confirming his suspicions about the world in general and fitting into the expected paradigm at last.

"You could help me move a couch."

His brows knit in confusion, and he smoothed a hand down his tie. "A… couch?"

"Yeah, a couch. You bled all over my old one, I'll have you know, and what with not knowing your medical history, well, suffice to say I bought a couch from some old lady off of craigslist and I need to pick it up before the end of the week." She was babbling. The lady has said she could take her time, but none of her friends were jumping at the chance to move a couch up 8 flights of stairs even for free pizza and beer.

"I can arrange for—"

"No, I want you to help me. You. Not your money." And knowing enough about psychology to seal the deal she added. "Are you afraid of a little manual labor?"

What in heaven's name was she doing. It was like some crazy irrational part of her was speaking on her behalf. Guys like Gaara didn't move couches. Did she even really want his help? Couldn't she just tape her dignity together like that torn check and wait for this storm to pass?

"When are you moving this couch?" Gaara leaned forward, softening his ramrod straight posture and catching her with a gaze that held consideration and a hint of something dangerous.

She had no idea. "Tomorrow," came the confident reply from her mouth, and her brain tried to catch up. "10am. Sharp. Unless you can't take off on a Friday. I would figure there would be good leave benefits here."

"I'll run it by my supervisor." The totally flat delivery belied the fact that he had probably just made a joke.

For the first time since stepping out of bed this morning, Sakura felt herself relax into a natural smile. Tension bled out of her limbs and for a moment it felt like they connected. The corners of Gaara's lips quirked.

They crashed to earth a moment later, Gaara clearing his throat and resuming his serious expression and perfect posture. Sakura sighed and gestured at his desk. "I don't suppose you have a sticky note or something so I can write down my address."

"No need." Came Gaara's clipped reply.

"What?!" Creepy stalker. She crossed her arms over her chest protectively, like he had violated her somehow.

Alarmed in a vague sort of way he qualified his words quickly. "My car contains the GPS coordinates from last week."

Of course. The wonders of the modern world. "Ah. Well, ok, then." She relaxed but found a buzzing awareness had taken residence now that her anxiety had largely fled. Heaven help her, she was considering flirting. That usually went disastrously.

They seemed to be done but neither of them made any motion to leave and the silence stretched on into uncomfortable territory.

"So…" Sakura focused on the crazy view of the city behind Gaara rather than hold his stare. "How are you feeling? Those guys got some good hits on you before you went crazy on them."

Gaara cringed slightly at the word 'crazy' and Sakura filed that away as something not to say again with a firm self-admonishment for making him feel bad. "I'm tolerable. No permanent damage." He was matter of fact about it. "You have admirable fighting skills."

"Comes from growing up with my idiot brother. He and I were always fighting, er, sparring really. Nothing serious, but we took martial arts classes together and you know how competitive siblings can be." Talking about home, about Naruto, was her comfort spot and she shifted in the stiff leather chair to try to find a better position rather than stay as still as prey. "Was that your brother and sister last week? I always wanted a sister."

"Yes." Gaara didn't follow the response with anything and after an expectant moment Sakura realized he wasn't going to.

Unsure what to say when the other person in the conversation didn't seem to want to participate, she continued on. "I was sad about my couch, but it seemed like your clothes came out worse. Were you able to have them cleaned?"

"No."

More silence. Moving the couch was going to be fantastic if he was always this communicative. It was a tight staircase and it took a lot of maneuvering to get the first one up, which had necessitated a lot of call and response between her and Naruto at the time. But she and Naruto always worked abnormally well together, and maybe Gaara would surprise her.

"Well, I'll see you tomorrow then. 10am, in front of my building. Wear something comfortable." Sakura stood, then leaned over to pick up the torn check and drop the pieces on his desk.

"Tomorrow," he agreed with a nod and seemed to start to rise only to pause and sink back down. "The receptionist will see you out."

He turned towards the computer on his desk to type something out briefly, only for the receptionist to open the door with a smile moments later. Sakura was a little miffed at the casual dismissal, but had to assume that was the normal way of things as she wandered back towards the elevator with her visitor pass in hand.

It was only much later that evening, when she was crouched over and moving furniture to make way for the couch that she realized when she bent over the swoop neck of her sweater dress gave an unimpeded view down to that green bra she had bought because it matched her eyes. It only took seconds to connect the dots. What Gaara thought of her after their encounter she could only conjecture.

***

"Are you going yachting after this?" Sakura had to stifle a guffaw when she saw Gaara walk up the street at exactly 9:58am. Light tan slacks and a designer polo in white of all things did not constitute casual in her book, which when she said casual she really had meant 'clothes you can get dirty in'.

"No." he responded, clearly not registering her mockery, or actively ignoring it. His hair was already looking like it was falling into disarray in the wind. No gel today, and she liked it better this way. Put together Gaara seemed like he existed in another world.

Her own jeans and t-shirt were too thin for the weather outside and she could feel her skin pebble into goosebumps as she rubbed her arms to calm them down. There was nothing to be done about her chest, also responding to the cold, but to Gaara's credit he kept his eyes from wandering. Maybe nearly flashing him in his office hadn't even been a big deal.

"Follow me," Sakura said authoritatively, "I borrowed a truck from a friend," Kiba had threatened her with the hounds of hell if she scratched it, "and I got the couch here, but as you'll see the up part of all this is going to be rather challenging."

She led him past the secure entryway and into a frigid cement and metal hallway where a typical square with walkways lining every floor led up ten stories. An ugly floral couch, which held the distinction of being very comfortable and not terribly old, waited on the cement slab at the base.

"How did you get the other couch down?" If he was cold, Gaara gave no indication, but Sakura was still shivering since there was no heat in this stairwell. She knew she would warm up fast from moving furniture, though.

"See that hole down the center? Getting the old one down and in pieces wasn't really a problem." She gave a sunny smile. "Do you want the front or the back?"

He didn't seem to catch her drift, so she made the decision for him.

"Nevermind, I'll take the front since I don't mind walking backwards. The corners are going to be tricky too, so there may be extra lifting from the middle and I've done this once before."

Gaara shrugged.

"You sure you don't need coffee or anything before we start, you look… tired." If anything the dark circles were more pronounced in the horrible stairwell lighting with that one flickering light from the fourth floor adding an eerie effect.

"Insomnia is a side effect of my antipsychotics." He said the words flatly, but he was looking at her out of the corner of his eye, gauging her reaction. "I'm used to it."

"That's rough!" Sakura responded. "A friend of mine started on anxiety medication a few years ago and gained like fifteen pounds in a month. But I'm sure any side effect sure beats the alternative." Hinata had been upset about the weight, but Naruto had just insisted there was more of her to love and truthfully she was much happier now.

With a rather unfeminine grunt, Sakura hefted up her side of the couch.

"It smells kind of like a basement, but that's way better than a couple other couches I almost got."

For his part, Gaara picked up his side easily. Given how fit he was, she wasn't shocked, but the nicely shaped muscles that popped up on his arms were still a pleasant surprise given how lean he appeared. Not a bad view for the next eight stories of effort.

"Follow my lead; just take a step as I pull." And then she fell silent as all her concentration went into not eating metal grate on the way up the stairwell.

Things progressed slowly but surely given how tight the space was against the railings, but corners took a lot of time what with lifting it over the railings and other angle issues. There was piping that had dials sticking out in odd places to further complicate the geometry of it all, but Gaara followed all Sakura's instructions to the letter without complaint. Even when he had to sit in one position for long periods of time holding the couch from falling off the side while Sakura considered her options to the point of his muscles visibly shaking. He never rushed her, and that was to his credit in her mind.

"Let's take a break here," she said, unsure of how to get around a particular corner which had had patched pipe added that jutted out. That hadn't been there when she had moved in years ago. Sighing, she realized she was caught in the little triangle of corner with couch on either side and no room to crawl under. She looked around, at Gaara, down the four story drop to cement death, then back at Gaara. The utility light flickered behind him, adding an extra layer of irritation.

"Dammit."

"Are you stuck?" Gaara asked, the corner of his mouth quirking in what must be amusement.

"Maybe." Then she sighed. "Yes." After a considered moment she glanced his way speculatively. "Do you think you could give me an arm? I'm going to go around."

Captain obvious just had to say something, reminding her how it was a bad idea. "That sounds unsafe."

"Are you saying no you won't help me?" She asked sweetly, rather than contest his point.

"No."

"Alright then, brace yourself, I'm not all bones like those society debutantes you probably hang out with."

Slowly extracting herself from the corner, she maintained a firm grip on the railing while swinging over one leg then another. Gaara waited just past the couch with brows knit in disapproval, absolutely attentive to her progress. She had to duck under the couch part that rested on the railing, and for a moment with her arms stretched on either side, she sensed a distinctive slippery feeling on her palms.

Paused, afraid to lay too much weight on the slick hand, she started slightly when Gaara's warm hand locked around her wrist.

"I've got you." He said tentatively. But it was all the encouragement she needed to make it the rest of the way. As she threw her first leg over his hand slipped to her waist instead, his touch light at first but firmed up as she leaned on him. Panting from adrenaline more than exertion, Sakura realized that the entire right side of her body was pressed down the center line of his. Something twitched at her hip and suddenly he shoved himself back and away, his adam's apple bobbing before he schooled himself into that mask of indifference again.

Sakura, stunned, tried to put her thoughts together. "I'll go through the door and up a floor so I can come back down to the other side."

Between his terse nod and the wide berth he gave her as she made her way past him and through the building door, Sakura would swear he was afraid of her. But that thought did nothing to subside her own body's reaction. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that throwing herself at a perfect stranger was irrational, no matter what her hormones said or given how much time had passed since she had had intimacy.

With some creative solutioning i.e. pushing extra hard at the same time Sakura pulled, they got the couch unstuck and up the rest of the floors without much incident and with no talking whatsoever. They used nonverbal ques for the hard parts, and after a while Gaara lost that panicked look when their lines of sight crossed.

This was silly, her inner self said, desire isn't something to be afraid of. He had pounds of muscle on her and all the wealth of a financial empire, and she was just some girl. But on the other hand she was some girl that had knocked him out in one punch and had bullied him into moving furniture when he probably had neither the time nor the inclination to do so. Then the thought finally struck her, even though it probably would have been obvious to anyone else:

He wanted to sleep with her and it scared the shit out of him.

Sakura's end of the couch slipped out of her suddenly slack hands, but she tried to pass it off as she rushed down the hallway to unlock her apartment door and open it wide.

"Once we get it in we'll almost be finished," Augh, word choice. "I mean, I rearranged the room last night so it won't be hard to put the couch where it needs to go." He was giving her a weird look, rightfully so.

Marching stiffly back down the hall, Sakura picked up her end of the couch and before she knew it Gaara was sitting exactly where he had been slightly over a week ago in her apartment. Only this time he wasn't shaking and speaking in tongues. Sakura was infinitely more terrified of this version.

"Let me get you some water." She blurted out and grabbed some bottled water she kept for emergency from the back of a low cupboard in the kitchenette. He probably didn't want filtered tap water like she was used to, even though this water wouldn't be cold. "This was a huge help to me, you know. I would have had to bribe my friends with beer and pizza and they still might not have shown up. No one ever has the same days off I do these days."

She stood up and nerveless hands dropped both water bottles which rolled their merry way across the counter and onto the floor. Gaara, sweaty and shirtless, was examining large smeared grease stains on the back of his polo. Of course he would take it off to examine it, she thought. _Of course._

A dirty, eager laugh in the back of her mind gave Sakura a sense of resigned inevitability to the whole situation.

Plopping down next to him on the couch as if he weren't half naked, Sakura swept the bottled water from the floor and offered it to him.

"Well, we did it." She put up her hand for a high five, and he stared at it until she literally picked up the hand that wasn't clutching the water and had it meet her own above her head.

"You aren't what I was expecting." Gaara's words made her breath catch as she dropped his hand back to his lap.

"Well, moving a couch certainly is a weird way to make a friend, but you showed your mettle today. I won't tell anyone you were the guy I knocked out. Just don't make a habit of getting in trouble and I won't have to make a habit of saving you."

Gaara opened the water with a twist and commented wryly, "You have an odd way of saving me."

Sakura bumped her shoulder into his while they both drank water, and it was supposed to be a gesture that any buddy would do but as she looked down she saw his stomach muscle tense and his slacks twitch as before, and there suddenly wasn't enough water in the world.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, but her voice was faint even to her own ears as her stomach clenched with feelings she wasn't sure she could suppress much longer.

"Yes." He answered emphatically and the meaning was unambiguous when he dropped his half-full water bottle on the rug, slid his hands into the hair at the base of her skull, and pulled her in for a kiss that was more tongue than lip.

Her need suffocated her, enveloped her brain in a hazy sense of rightness that was only spoiled by stray thoughts like 'there's no condom in this apartment' and 'I hope he doesn't think I'm that kind of girl' while her body not only insisted she was that kind of girl but he needed to get on with much more that.

Sakura gave as good as she got, and they kissed like there would be a winner in this game, but all that resulted was the building feeling of frustration that they weren't closer. Gaara may have been the aggressor initially, but he wasn't pressing for anything more than kissing from her, and it simply wasn't enough.

Quickly, before she had time to talk herself out of it, Sakura disengaged and stood up to undo her jeans and slide them off her legs while kicking off her sneakers. Gaara watched her and took a long ragged breath before Sakura straddled him, grinding her crotch against his to generate the friction her body sorely craved. He made what sounded like a growl, but other than placing hands on her hips, he did little more than thrust up in her direction. Hard as a rock, the pressure against her core was delicious and Sakura bent down to bite gently at Gaara's throat and in turn lick softly at the salty skin there.

Every time she opened her eyes and leaned back from tasting him, she observed him staring at her with an open appreciation that made her feel powerful and beautiful. She continued to push them farther along, coming back to his lips time and again before grinding harder against his erection to glean moans from that serious mouth of his.

Whipping her shirt and bra off, Sakura turned herself around on his lap and forced one of Gaara's hands to her breast while the other she placed inside her panties in the now extremely slick spot she needed him. Gaara stilled, the only part of him moving being his throbbing cock, until Sakura began to make little circle with his hand for him. He got the picture pretty quickly, cupping her breast while flicking his finger in the steady motion she had taught him.

Not unlike moving the couch, he took her direction perfectly.

_Left a little. Faster. Slower. Keep going just like that._

Breath hitching as she climbed to her release, Sakura felt herself go over the edge with a cry and forced Gaara's hand to still as she immediately became over sensitive to his ministrations. Once her body's aftershocks had ceased she knelt in front of Gaara and began undoing his slacks with fierce determination in her eyes. She needn't have worried because no sooner was he exposed to the air, all it took was a couple pumps and one long lick from base to tip before he was spilling himself over her hands with a shudder. At last he closed his eyes and arched off the couch until his own release subsided.

The apartment was silent except for their slowing breathing. Sakura searched for her discarded shirt and quickly pulled it on, wiping off her hands on the hem, before sitting back down on the couch next to Gaara who was still splayed out and dazed as he glanced in her direction.

She picked up what was left of the water that hadn't spilled out of his bottle onto the carpet and drained it in one go.

"That was…" Sakura searched for a word and nothing seemed to leap to mind. Amazing was accurate. Unplanned was as well.

"Usually my encounters are…" Gaara paused to find the word.

Sakura didn't wait as she covered her eyes with her hands now that shame was rearing its ugly head over the fact that she had just slept with this near stranger. "Romantic?"

"Transactional." Gaara clarified. Now he was the one to look away with color staining his cheeks. His hand stroked her thigh slowly, tentatively. "This was much better."

If all he did was sleep with women who were paid to please him, then that would explain how clueless he had seemed about what to do with her body.

"For the record, I really did just need help moving my couch." Sakura wanted to make him feel more comfortable despite the fact that she felt awkward as hell herself in this moment. "But I'm not sorry this happened." She said it out loud to convince herself, but it had the ring of truth to it.

Gaara's thumb made feather light circles against the skin of her thigh and Sakura could feel her body wanting to respond again.

"I think I need a shower." She announced, standing up on legs that wobbled only the slightest bit after all the exercise of the morning. "Care to join me? No hanky panky in there, though, there's not nearly enough room."

There was a wide genuine smile that spread across Gaara's face, the first she had seen that actually engaged his whole mouth instead of looking like a facial tic, and he dropped his own pants as he stood from the couch.

Sakura guessed that if she had had a body that toned she wouldn't be embarrassed about being nude either.

***

"What is _he_ doing here? Ladies night, hello!" Ino threw her hands up as Gaara helped Sakura out of his car.

"You were the one who said I needed to get laid." Sakura tried not to be snarky. Really she had done it because Ino had brought Chouji to their brunch last week. She never got Sunday off and she was a little miffed about him horning in on their girl time and forcing her to play third wheel.

Gaara for his part was still working on his 'casual' game, and almost looked like a normal person in a black t-shirt and black jeans. The black leather jacket was still designer, as were the black combat boots, but the overall effect was dangerous and damn sexy. He managed to pull it off despite it being too monochromatic to be truly normal. Tonight's effort looked like it had been helped along by Temari. At least Sakura assumed so since he had recently opened up slightly more normal lines of communication with his siblings at her urging.

"Should I leave?" He took a step toward Sakura, getting close enough to put a gently possessive hand on her hip. She tried not to be annoyed. Gaara's intimacy and abandonment issues being what they were, this was worlds better than his behavior towards her in public a month ago when they started sleeping together.

"He volunteered to not only be our designated driver, but to buy our drinks and stay out of sight."

Ino's foot stopped tapping in irritation at Sakura's words and she gave a brief nod before she did an about face and walked into the club. With accuracy bourn of years of practice, her long ponytail flicked into Sakura's face while the pink-haired nurse wrinkled her nose and flinched.

"She'll be grateful before the night is over." Sakura ghosted a kiss across Gaara's lips, but only made it a couple feet away before he grabbed at her wrist and hauled her in for something more satisfying.

"No more of that now, this is ladies' night. You get your time later." Sakura pulled back, convinced her carefully applied lipstick was halfway across her cheek now.

"Why do I let you set the terms?" Gaara asked darkly, and Sakura knew he was wondering why he had signed up for a miserably stressful night in an environment he would never frequent on his own. She hadn't asked, he had volunteered when she had told him she was going to a club with Ino. Sakura knew he was imagining some dire situation where a man tried to swoop in and steal her away, and she had no way of reassuring him of that impossibility so she agreed to his presence.

To hold him over for the next few hours, being the obsessive personality she knew him to be, Sakura pulled his ear down to her lips by yanking on his leather jacket and proceeded to tell him an abridged version of what she planned to do to him later when they got to her place.

"And don't forget, if you get in my way tonight," she jokingly made a punching motion, hoping to make him laugh and remind him of how they met in the first place.

Oddly, the gesture just sparked a fire in his already heated perusal of her body.

Sakura cleared her throat and forced herself to walk straight into the club without a backward glance. Ladies' night, indeed.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't that he overbearing, or controlling—Sakura fully believed Gaara was both of those things but he would never get away with that with her—he was more pervasive.

If she had had a bad or stressful shift somehow food she hadn't ordered would appear at her door, already paid for including tip. Restless nights turned into impromptu outings to whatever coffee shop looked most empty, and they would watch boring documentaries on his laptop while Sakura dozed on his shoulder. Usually the wifi was shitty and the buffering would interrupt it, but he never complained. Every major holiday seemed to end in an attempted gift that Sakura inevitably told him to take back, to the point of it becoming ritual with them.

A new mixer? _Where would I put it, my kitchen is too small and I don't cook much._

Fancy sheets and towels? _A waste of money. Are you saying mine are too dirty for you?_

Jewelry? _You left it on the nightstand after we had sex, idiot. How do you think that looked?_

His time was a precious thing, with lots of demands from people who in turn were important in their own right, so it wasn't like he was always physically there with her. But for Sakura, Gaara seemed to be omnipresent. Any text she sent would be responded to within an hour no matter how busy his day.

So clearly when the pattern broke, she got curious. It was the middle of the day on a rare off Sunday and she sent a feeler out to someone that she still wasn't entirely sure even liked her. Temari wasn't the sort of person who approved of much, and her little brother's new relationship was an unknown quantity to the cautious woman.

_Gaara ok? Radio silence._ Read the text Sakura sent. It was to the point which Temari would appreciate.

The text bubbles popped up, subsided, then popped up again.

Fifteen minutes later an actual reply arrived: _He's standing in front of me reading a will._

Sakura's brows rose in surprise then knit with concern. That other life of his, the one that featured expensive parties and expensive promises, was not one he had particularly wanted her involved in because he would only describe it as 'treacherous'. In that world he had to be a leader, an example, a paragon. In Sakura's presence he got to be a regular guy, in as much as he could be regular, and she had respected that division to a point but this only served as another example of how she felt outside of him and surrounded by him simultaneously. Something had to give soon. He had to let her in or she would walk away.

If she could walk away.

Someone in his family must have died and named him executor of the will, and while Sakura could care less about who got what dishes she would have expected him to share some sort of emotion with her regarding the death. She vented to him constantly, and a little reciprocation would be welcome. Maybe she also wanted a peek into his mysterious other life.

There had been a reason for her disdain for debutantes and the trappings of the richy rich, though, and it all came flooding back to her when Gaara showed up at her door later that evening in his sedate black suit with a storm of emotion at his heels.

"How do you know Sasuke Uchiha." No hey, how are you, not that he was that kind of guy, but the words were thrown like a punch and Sakura felt her body recoil from the impact. Bile rose in the back of her throat at that name.

"We are _not_ having this conversation in the doorway." Or ever, if she really let her preference be known.

He made a motion to enter, but her hand on his chest stopped him. The sneer he wore probably wasn't for her, but Sakura took it personally anyway. How the hell had all this happened and why was he angry at her? He knew her. She was an open book, or so she thought. (Ino snorted at her for claiming it, but Sakura maintained that she lived an honest life.)

"We're also not having it in this apartment." She glanced at the clock and the dusting of droplets on his shoulders. So it was raining, which meant no walk. There was a bar across the street, some dive she always skimmed her eyes over as she made her way home. Seemed like the right place to talk about Sasuke, and she'd need a drink anyway. "I'll meet you across the street in ten. Ichiraku."

***

He was alone in a booth under a broken light, which was unsurprising, but the empty glass in front of him was. Gaara wasn't a drinker, never wanting to be in a situation where he wasn't in control of his faculties. Whatever brought Sasuke to his attention had him rattled.

"I take it you had a bad day." Sakura started as she slid into the seat across from him. The table rocked on an unsteady foundation before her and she clamped down on the impulse to fold up a napkin from the holder and fix it. You couldn't fix the world.

"How do you know Sasuke Uchiha?" It was all gravel and barely question in that baritone of his. He signaled to the bartender and Sakura whipped her head around to see the man pouring two fingers of whiskey. She hoped that was only his second.

"He was my brother's…" Best friend? Rival? "Friend in high school. Before he got expelled our junior year." The truth was stranger than fiction, so tried to back it up to where it would make sense. "We'd known one another a lot longer than that. Our parents all were in the same line of work."

"Law enforcement." Gaara supplied, having heard bits here and there from her about her family.

Sakura sighed. "We all grew up together but Sasuke's life was… different." Difficult. Isolated. Always trying to live up to a brother he both idolized and despised. "His family's word was law, practically. He was like, I dunno, a prince or something." She had said it to herself in her own mind a million times growing up but saying it out loud as an adult made her feel supremely stupid.

The drink arrived and Sakura caught the attention of the server. "White Russian, whatever vodka is fine." She got carded which raised her spirits a little, but that self-satisfied smile didn't last long when she turned back to Gaara.

"The point is I haven't seen him or heard that name for years. So you're going to tell me what this is about first and then I'll tell you more." She crossed her arms, baiting him with the story he desperately wanted to hear.

"We share a distant relation." Gaara started, haltingly. "She passed. He was there today at the reading of the will. Temari said I needed to talk to you in front of him,"

This seemed totally innocuous.

"He heard your name and said he was surprised I would be with you. He said you had dated for a while and how it was clever you had found another branch of the family to climb."

Sakura's fist met the top of the table, making the napkin holder fall over. She tried to pull herself together while she seethed. The comment had been meant to hurt Gaara, because he couldn't see the partial lie in the barb, but Sakura mostly cursed how all the upper crust people seemed to be related. Guess you couldn't let the money out of the family, literally in some cases.

"You can't possibly believe I designed our meeting. Or that it was some ruse to get your money!"

"Of course not," Gaara replied without hesitation, but it was followed with a comment like a whip crack. "You slept with him." The words were all venom.

That was almost half her lifetime ago, he was nuts. "You're going to listen to my story." Sakura tried to pull back from the righteous white hot rage giving her a headache and say her words calmly. They were in public after all, and the weird blue haired man at the pool table kept looking over in their direction and laughing. Shark tattoo, not even a good one, what a jerk. "And at the end you're going to apologize to me for being a bastard." She was shaking, nails digging into the vinyl seat with enough force to hurt her.

Their drinks arrived and Sakura drained hers before the waiter had time to walk away and then handed him the glass to refill. The milky drink sat on her tongue, coating it in sugar, and the bile threatened to rise again but she forced it down along with her anger. She had fought for control of her temper her whole life and she wasn't going to make a scene now.

"I thought I loved him." The words were more wistful than she meant them to be. "Lies are more convincing when you tell them to yourself over time."

***

It hadn't been easy to convince him to go with her to the dance. Sakura had had to practice feigning indifference in the mirror for days, saying the words over and over until they came out just right. Ino had called her crazy, Sakura preferred thorough.

He lived in a crazy huge house in a gated community, and Sakura knew he had his own motorcycle but no car so she would have to plan accordingly, hair, dress, shoes, bag, etc. It all needed to be able to look good before and after. She approached the problem with the heart of a military tactician. Wars had been fought with less planning than she put into this date.

_Date._

The word thrilled her. It wasn't really a date, she was just going with him to the debutante ball that he was told he had to attend (she had heard this through Naruto) and abhorred the idea of because he was only just sixteen and had no intention to network or pick a bride or whatever else went on at these things. A relative had bought him a ticket and told him to go or they would cut off his personal allowance. It was time for him to come out of hiding, his family had said. Loners weren't successful, and success was everything to the Uchiha.

"Maybe I can go with you, shield you from the other dumb girls." It should have raised red flags that he always spoke of women in the pejorative, but she was ever blind to his faults.

The white dress was impractical, and cost her way more money than she wanted to spend from her meager little savings account. Her father had handed her a couple twenties, and she had supplied the rest without telling him. Naruto's mom had commented it was pretty, but she wasn't a dress kind of woman so it slid past the parentals.

Naruto had wrinkled his nose at her.

"It looks like a wedding dress. You're freaking me out."

He wasn't totally wrong, and she had bought it at a bridal shop after all. It was a special dress for a special night.

Sasuke was late, but that he came at all filled Sakura's innocent heart with joy. His suit jacket was wrinkled and his pants looked dirty on the bottom as if he had sped through a puddle on the way here. He and Naruto silent saluted one another, and Naruto joked about killing him if he laid a hand on her in the wrong way. The amused snort from Sasuke should have been another warning sign. Sakura was blinded by his handsome face and fathomless eyes.

They were only at the dance for an hour before he pulled her out to 'get some air'. It had taken her a half hour to repair her hair and makeup in the bathroom after they arrived so all told Sakura had only spent a half hour in her fantasy where couple twirled in waltzes and ate fancy food around the periphery. She didn't even get to dance.

But somehow she ended up on a moonless night in at a viewpoint in a park that they legally shouldn't have been in past sunset with her skirts bunched up around her waist. Sasuke had taken her there to complain about his family and rage about the unfair restrictions they tried to put on him. She sat there, bored and a little cold, and made soothing nonsense replies until he turned to her with something crossed between desperation and anger and kissed her hard.

If it looked like romance and smelled like romance then it had to be romance right? It's what she had wanted wasn't it? Even if she had tried to push at him at first, she had asked for this hadn't she? That's what he told her, anyway.

God, she had been such an idiot.

She didn't tell Naruto until years later, when the self recrimination didn't make her loathe her own weakness so much. By then Naruto and Sasuke had stopped talking entirely, really once Sasuke got expelled for nearly killing some kid in a fight for just saying Itachi's name in his presence and sent to some boarding school somewhere, it hadn't made any difference that he wanted to beat the ever loving shit out of the Uchiha prodigy. She also wanted to beat the shit out of him by that time.

For taking her innocence so cavalierly and under dubiously consensual circumstances.

For killing her dreams of romance and, for a long time, faith in men entirely.

But most of all for showing her the depths of her own foolishness over a pretty face with a tortured soul.

***

Sakura was still cradling half of her second drink, speaking as if in a trance, and when her words ceased she drained the last of it despite the ice having made it objectionably watery.

Eyes bright and defiant, she looked back up at Gaara meaningfully. "Guess I didn't really learn my lesson about the whole handsome and tormented schtick, right?"

Gaara was unreadable for a moment, but that murderous aura had not let up for the entirety of her story.

"I'll fucking kill him." He finally said. "I'll tear the limbs from his body and pulp his bones, but not before I skin him an inch at a time."

Gaara was starting to look a little excited at the prospect, and finally Sakura remembered the other reason he didn't drink: he wasn't supposed to because it would interact poorly with his medication.

"Don't you dare," Sakura said, "Firstly, because he's not worth your time and secondly, because I deserve the first go at him." She pointed an authoritative finger at him. "Your job is to be better than him."

She paused as Gaara seemed to digest this.

"You are better than him."

His face softened a little, then wrinkled with distaste.

"You know what happened after he got expelled?" Gaara said before pushing the last of his drink away from him. "He got sent to _my_ boarding school. My father had recommended it because of its reputation for _rehabilitating_ troubled young men of a certain social caste." Gaara had pointed out a few scars on his back from the canings he had sustained there so she knew Sasuke's presence had probably just exacerbated a hellish situation for Gaara.

It wasn't fair that one person could cause so much pain to others just because they themselves were in pain. Sasuke's selfishness was really what had isolated him all those years ago. Sakura, Naruto, and half a dozen of their peers would have been ready to embrace him in a heartbeat. As much as she wanted him to suffer, she had a feeling he did already.

"Granny Chiyo never approved of me. We weren't related by blood, my grandfather was her fourth husband. She said I was heartless, just like my father." Gaara pulled the drink back to him. "But she made me executor…" He was lost a moment, thoughtful and calm, but sad. "She would have approved of you if she had met you. I see similarities."

Sakura almost didn't want to breathe. He was sharing with her. Voluntarily. And not as pillow talk. Her astonishment ate away at her continued irritation at him for this whole scenario.

"You don't shove weird hard candies at me when I visit, though."

"Should I?" Sakura asked, allowing a smile to peek out.

His shudder was all the answer she needed. Whatever bomb had gone off between them had done all the damage it was going to do and they were still standing. She even still liked him. Maybe more.

She had to file that thought in the back of her mind for now. She didn't want it sullied by tonight's trip down memory lane.

"Well, I suggest you pay for our drinks and come back with me to wait until I declare you sober enough to take your medication. And if you get a clue and apologize I might even allow make up sex to be put on the agenda before the month is out."

It was as pushy as she could get about it, since ordering him to say sorry about forcing her to relive one of her worst memories would be pointless. Gaara just stared at her like she had grown a second head.

With a sigh, emotionally exhausted, Sakura stood up and began to walk to the door. She hadn't even made it to her building when trembling hands grabbed her up into a tight hug.

"I'm sorry," his voice was a whisper and even with his lips right by her ear she barely heard his next words. "Don't leave."

It wasn't perfect, and it might not even be healthy, but this relationship was hers and she was going to hold on as tightly as he was right now. If her sixteen year old self had seen this in the future, maybe she would have held out for better. Gaara was no Sasuke.

"I'm no quitter," she reassured the redhead, and turned around in his loosening embrace to give him a peck on the lips. He was going in for more as she felt him respond already to their closeness. "But I'm also no pushover. You're sleeping on the couch tonight."

"I'd like to negotiate for better terms."

Sakura's laugh rang out in the empty street.


End file.
